


The Binding in the Music

by Lauren (notalwaysweak)



Category: Emelan - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Alternate Universe - After College/University, Alternate Universe - Bands, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Multi, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-08 21:50:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5514590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notalwaysweak/pseuds/Lauren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Briar muses briefly about the formation of the Circle band as they prepare to record their second studio album, <em>The Circle Opens</em>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Binding in the Music

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Meatball42](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meatball42/gifts).



> Tamora Pierce's Emelan characters do not belong to me and I am making no money off this work of fan fiction.
> 
> * * *

The rehearsal room at Winding Circle Studios was, Briar thought, always a lot more peaceful before Tris arrived.

Before she arrived, Sandry would be doing vocal exercises, waking her throat and lungs and diaphragm up for the day. Daja would be meditating or running her fingertips around the rim of her hang drum as if coaxing the painstakingly beaten metal to singing life. Briar would be tuning Sandry’s violin or cleaning the mouthpiece of his flute. The room would otherwise be quiet and serene. If anything, Sandry’s voice and the soft sounds of Briar testing the violin strings contributed to the serenity.

Then Tris would thunderstorm in, glowering as if she were personally, profoundly offended at the idea of committing their music to a mere digital recording instead of a stage show before a live audience.

That was always the moment when the band coalesced and truly came awake, though: when the four of them were in one room. Whether it was here at the studio or out on tour, or even at their shared home—a dilapidated farmhouse in Summersea, Massachusetts—there was a certain power between them.

“I don’t know how you can live together with her,” their head studio technician, Crane—he only went by the one name, like Madonna or Cher—was often heard to say.

Briar kept his own counsel about how they managed to live with Tris. Sometimes it involved a brisk dunking in the chilly water of Popponesset Bay. Sometimes it involved something considerably hotter, something that brought all four of them together closer than he suspected their fans ever imagined.

Today was their fifth day of recording, sharing the studio’s time with the folk duo currently winding down in the second rehearsal room. Rose and Lark were lovely women—Briar had attempted flirting with both of them and been firmly dissuaded more than once—but Rose was prone to getting into verbal sparring matches with Crane about anything and everything, and Briar just hoped she hadn’t wound him up too much today.

Lark popped her head into their rehearsal room. “We’re off now,” she said with a friendly smile. “Crane should be ready for you shortly.”

“You could stay a moment or two, while we’re waiting,” Briar offered. He spied Rose waiting in the hallway behind Lark. “Both of you.”

“I suppose you’ll ask your bandmates to clear out, too,” Rose said. “Just to give you and us some privacy.”

Briar grinned. “Of course.”

“Not today, Briar,” Lark said.

“Or any day,” Rose added.

As they left, Briar turned an aggrieved look on said bandmates, who were all laughing at his expense. “You don’t have to howl quite so much,” he informed them.

“You do know they’re both lesbians, Briar?” Tris asked in her usual forthright manner.

“Yes, but so is Daja, and _she_ makes exceptions.”

“ _An_ exception,” Daja corrected, looking up from her hang drum. It had been her final year project, and she was rarely parted from it for long. “Which I may well withdraw if you keep trying to ply strangers with your favors.”

“They’re not strangers!”

“They’re not _us_ ,” Sandry said and, as usual, that settled it. Sandry had a way of resolving every argument, big or small, that the band had. She had been the one to own the battered old pickup they’d optimistically called their “tour bus” in the early days, playing dive bars, the crowds initially unsure what to make of this quartet with their unusual combination of instruments. She had negotiated the dive bars in the first place, mostly in college towns. If anywhere would accept them, it was college towns; they’d met at MassArt and knew college kids.

It had worked. Slowly, but it had worked. They’d upgraded from the pickup to an SUV big enough for their instruments and for whoever wasn’t driving to nap in the back. They’d upgraded from dive bars to real bars, or at least clean ones.

And, somewhere along the way, they’d upgraded their relationship from strictly bandmates to a lovely, messy four-way love circle—circle, not square, because it wasn’t just something with lines from Briar to Daja to Sandry to Tris and back to Briar, but with all four of them cross-connected, like embroidery and lacework.

This was also why, after many names had been suggested, argued about, and rejected, the name of their band had ultimately ended up being simply _Circle_.

“Do we want to start with ‘Healing in the Vine’ or ‘Cold Fire’ today?” Sandry asked.

“‘Cold Fire’,” Tris said immediately. “I’m ready for some solid work.”

“You haven’t even tuned up yet,” Briar protested.

“Did it outside.” Tris’s fingers rippled over the strings of her bass, producing a mellow sound at odds with the way she’d stomped into the rehearsal room. As she did it, her face softened. Briar didn’t have to ask what had had her so grumpy to begin with; Tris was not a morning person and the hotel they were staying at for the duration of the recording had lousy coffee.

“Sounds good,” Briar said.

Tris gave him a rare smile. “What about you, are you ready?”

Briar lifted his flute to his lips and rippled through a few scales before segueing into his part of ‘Cold Fire’. The others nodded appreciatively at the melody. Tris in particular was listening closely; her bass had to counterpoint his high notes, or they’d sound awful. Likewise, Daja and Sandry’s hang drum and violin had to sing in harmony, not shout over each other.

Still, that was why their music worked so well: because they’d learned over time to complement each other as people, not just as instruments.

Daja added her own notes to Briar’s flute refrain, fingers dancing over the drum, flashing off the metal so adroitly they seemed to be part of it. Tris’s bass came in below them both, anchoring the sound. At last Sandry joined them, first with her voice and then with her violin, drawing the bow across the strings as deftly as she worked thread at her loom or drove her embroidery needle.

Lost in the sound, none of them noticed Crane standing in the doorway, his usually stern face unstiffened at the sounds they made together. It may have been a rough version of the song, but it was backed by their four hearts, and thus very nearly perfect.

“Come on, you lot, don’t waste that talent on the empty air when you could be recording it,” Crane said when the song finished, making Briar jump.

“All right, Circle, let’s go,” Sandry said, leading the quartet out of the room.

**Author's Note:**

> Summersea, MA does not exist, but if it did it'd be near Mashpee, MA, which does have a Summersea _Road_.


End file.
